Scattered Souls

by Shahnaz Bashir

  During his college years, Ameen also doubled as a teacher in various private schools, teaching social sciences to high school kids. The principals of these schools often received complaints from their students that Ameen frequently deviated from the topic and lapsed into philosophizing history and politics. Something that was heavy for the school-going students to understand and digest. He would habitually leave the syllabus unfinished because he spent a long time ‘intellectualizing’ the lessons. By the end of his college, Ameen had passionately and enthusiastically studied almost all the great schools of thought and all the isms. He developed his own notion of looking at life in the world and called his philosophy critical responsibilism. He believed in acts and deeds that were balanced on both belief in God and an unceasing reason to constantly, crazily and critically evaluate the belief and his existence in the world. In the long, informal, late-night shopfront debates with his elderly friends about existence in the world full of alternating, though disproportionate, suffering and happiness, he maintained ‘it’s what it’s’. And for all the great possibilities of and imaginations about a better afterlife, he would add to this phrase and say … ‘if it isn’t then wait until it’s …’ But Ameen was highly inarticulate. He stammered since his birth and could never be understood properly. He couldn’t produce spontaneous explanations. He would quickly regard himself as stupid and shiver and bat his eyelids and become sad. And the outcome would be that he only ascended and progressed in the levels of wisdom and consciousness. He took unfinished thoughts and speculations as challenges. His philosophy could mostly be understood from his actions. There were some people around him who were greatly articulate, but they just waffled and seldom made sense. Of such people Ameen was dismissive. He had a mixed temperament of emotion and wisdom coupled with arrogance. But above all, in any circumstance, he was never prejudiced. If he would be angry with anyone he imagined himself in the person’s place and situation and tried to understand if whether he would have felt and acted in the same manner.

  For five years after college, Ameen applied for various odd jobs, which he either didn’t get or didn’t find fulfilling in the least. All the while he applied for posts of nursing, office attendant, a peon in the court, among many others; and to earn a little financial support for himself, he would go from door-to-door, giving private tuitions to kids from rich families. Ameen ultimately got a teacher’s job in a government school where he received a good salary. And immediately his parents married him to an ordinary, semi-educated, pretty girl from the neighbourhood.

  One fateful day in the year 2012, the Army picked up two young boys from Natipora. People poured out onto the streets to protest, demanding release of the boys. Ameen watched the scene from the window of his bedroom, overlooking the main road of the neighbourhood. As the crowd grew thicker and the protests louder, the Army fired aerial shots to disperse the people. Ameen nimbly withdrew from the window, pulling it shut. And as soon as he turned away, a stray bullet from nowhere came piercing through the windowpane and sank into his back, touching his spine. Ameen fell.

  Gradually, now he has begun to look for imperfections in the heavenly things about which he had in his worldly life always ‘problematized and intellectualized’. Also, no news comes from the world, and that makes him further curious. He is dying to know what has happened to the unfinished business of wars on the earth. What has become of the game of thrones? What has come out of all the confrontations, all the anxiety, all the frustration and all the hate in the world? … He is dying for an update … Has Kashmir won its freedom by now? Who is the superpower now in the world? What has happened to the Middle-East finally? And if, for an example’s sake, one has to die even in heaven, can he be expected to die in peace, knowing that finally the nuclear weapons have never been used, however, they have been left to rot and rust disused, wherever they were preserved in the world? And whether it has by now been realized on earth that race and caste and creed were the greatest illusive constructs that so many had so foolishly nursed and so fondly harboured? And whether people have by now understood that they are going to be accountable only for their deeds based on their knowledge and not on the basis of interferences in others’ lives, nor on the basis of unknowability? Or whether they still continue to fool themselves. Each time he thinks about these issues, he is doped with pleasure. He is torn between bliss and consciousness. But everything he sees here is unquestionably perfect and absolute. After looking at the face of a houri, he cannot think about any better match. He is reminded of Hegel’s ‘absolute reality’. A houri’s face is beyond all the beauty and charm produced after the total beauty of the entire universe were to be concentrated into a single face.

  His intellect has become a reason for his suffering in heaven, hence a problem, so he has begun to think about this single problem. What is the purpose of the mind in heaven? Is it needed here? If yes, then why has it not been limited to only appreciate the perfection and absoluteness? Or has it been? Or could he be allowed to ask: what the hell is heaven actually? He thinks and thinks and is bored and perturbed.

  The only alternative to his boredom is hell, but that in no case is an option. Though it is a place full of treasures of problems and imperfections, but the problem is that, in contrast to the constant pleasures in heaven, hell is full of constant suffering. Constant, absolute, perfect suffering and misery wouldn’t at least let anyone find a moment’s rest to think, not to speak of thinking at leisure.

  An angel appears in Muhammad Ameen’s palatial house in heaven as he prepares himself to make love to an indescribably pretty houri. He is curious to remove the silken cloth, glittering with its sequins of gold and precious emeralds, and unveil a platter the angel has brought. The houri waits as Ameen fights his urge to ask the angel if it could bring him a list of problems instead. Problems from anywhere in the universe—for example, somewhere a certain race of unknown aliens would have illegally occupied a planet of some other race—are most welcome. That somewhere there is some resistance war going on. Or even problems from some corner of the heaven itself where a certain group of jannatis, dwellers of the heaven, are complaining about the small size of grapes in their vineyards or the small size of seeds in their pomegranates. Or maybe certain streams of milk and honey have begun to dry up and there is a little crisis there. Or some jannati has been grievous ever since his entry into heaven for he has been demanding a dark-skinned houri, but due to the unavailability of such a creature here, as only the fair-skinned ones have been promised in heaven for jannatis, he has suffered at the cost of this small unfulfilled desire. Anything can do; something that he needs to think over. But such problems have never been reported to occur in heaven. Everyone here is content with what one has been blessed and bestowed with. But then he is yet to know if any of the jannatis he knows has the same complaint and the same problem as his, that of what to think about in heaven and why? Is there any social contract on indifference among the jannatis? Are all jannatis bestowed with equal levels of consciousness here? And what kind of consciousness? Does eternal stay in heaven only suit indifferent hedonists? And he literally swallows his tongue while resisting asking such blasphemous and stupid questions. But he tries to please the angel in order to create possibilities for asking such questions in future. As soon as Ameen begins to dust off the tip of the angel’s left wing a speck of silver dust that he has just spotted, his hand is stopped and he is informed by a certain voice that while travelling towards him through the cosmos, the angel accidentally brushed a galaxy on its way and there is no need to dust its wing as it is going to refix the cosmic thing to its position in the universe. The angel has to travel back, half a million light years, to carry out the task which wouldn’t take it more than half a second or so. This arresting learning leaves Ameen’s mouth agape. And he now thinks that he should ask his favourite questions about the universe, that have always lurked in him, of the angel. What is vacuum, that surrounds universe, actually made of? And, in fact, what was vacuum origina
lly? And if it was nothingness, then how far did that nothingness spread? Did it have its own infinity? If yes, then what would the place where it met with the universe be called?

  He thinks of Spinoza’s ‘conceptions of self and universe’ … When the mind imagines its own lack of power, it is saddened by it …

  But he cannot ask any such questions, which can become a reason for his exit from the heaven like Adam. Thinking of Adam, he cannot now resist his temptation to think about finding the exact place where his forefather had eaten the forbidden fruit of wheat. Ameen still can’t do anything. He knows that each atom of his existence in heaven is being watched by God, who is utterly pleased with him and will not chastise him for merely harbouring such intentions. God instead rewards people for good intentions. Muhammad Ameen keeps quiet about his problems. And wishes that he were in a place where there was no heaven and no hell, not even the knowledge of self; a place of no existence, a place of no questions and no answers, no pain, no rewards, nothing; a place of complete silence and unknowingness, unconsciousness—all like a dreamless sleep … But the value of the pleasure of being in such place could only be known in consciousness.

  … What is the purpose of the mind in heaven? Ameen murmured the same question again and again. The murmurs grew louder and louder. And he began to stammer. Sweating, he woke up to find his mother beside him, comforting him, trying to wake him up already, trying to hold away his hands from his throat—as he would often try to strangle himself in sleep—fanning away the flies that bumbled round and round in the room for sometime and then returned and landed on his face again. Ameen lay steady in his bed, frail to lapse into one more long, deep slumber.

  Doctors had decided not to take any chance with the surgery on Ameen’s back. Removing the bullet, they believed, could paralyse his whole body or might even lead to his death. He was prescribed medicines that were expected to dissolve the bullet to an extent. And that would take a long time.

  Muhammad Ameen has been in bed, lying on his back for a year now, staring at his monthly X-ray films and reports, trying to trace the position and size of the silent bullet.

  The Woman Who Became Her Own Husband

  Can you be one and the same person at the same time? … Maybe a person gets better by just letting herself be who she is.

  —Ingmar Bergman, Persona

  In my life nothing of the sort happened that, I can say, was unusual or was something that might not have happened to you—except the tale I am going to tell.

  In the early ’90s, when I used to run a grocery store in the neighbourhood, a new family arrived to rent the vacant first floor in the popular Khan Sojourn at Jawahar Nagar. The Sojourn was across the link road, exactly opposite my shop. In the vicinity of the Lal Chowk market hub of Srinagar city, Jawahar Nagar was one of the buzzing neighbourhoods where people from farther villages of Kashmir would come to take refuge as tenants. The insurgency movement was more active in villages and the people would frequently become targets of Army retaliations. The situation was no good in the city either, but since the city was always on the media radar, and above all it was the city, it attracted students, government employees, blacklisted politicians, and even the ‘wanted’ insurgents from the villages.

  I was, I must say, the famed local guide to people seeking houses on rent. I kept the update on all the relinquishments and ‘to-lets’. I knew the rent details, variable facilities, advantages, agreement policies and the temperaments of the owners. I was the trusted custodian of the neighbourhood. So I even kept keys of certain flats, of big houses like Yousuf Villa, Bhat Cottage, Khan Sojourn and many more. Almost all the flat owners and tenants were my regular customers. Some tenants would stay for years, some for several months, some just for a few. Some would vacate their flats without notice and become my absconding debtors for the grocery they would take on credit. I’d become family friends with many of them. Many friendships lasted even years after the tenants were gone. Some grew so attached to my family that now they are the only people who frequently travel down to the city to pay visits to me and my bedridden wife. But of them all, the tenant family I remember the most is the Zargars.

  There were only three persons in the Zargar family: Tariq Zargar, his wife Ayesha and his old mother whose name I didn’t know, except the fact that everyone called her Aaapa Ji. Tariq and Ayesha, as I gradually learnt, were married for five years and still trying for a child. The Zargars took the first floor in the Khan Sojourn. I don’t exactly remember whether it was 1991 or 1992, but only that it was a certain year in the early ’90s and the month was February.

  Tariq Zargar was a handsome man of medium height and moderate build. He had a sallow face with a smart-looking shot of well-trimmed, boxed beard and his hair parted on a side. It took me a month to notice that he had a congenital defect in his right foot. In order to lift that leg to walk, he had to give a slight flick to it. Yet his pleasant personality overshadowed this small. The most memorable thing about Tariq was not his defective foot but a lively smile he always wore. Tariq was a manager in the Jammu & Kashmir Bank. He had shifted from his native village in south Kashmir’s Islamabad district to Jawahar Nagar, pursuant to his transfer which, to get rid of the volatile situation in his hometown, he had himself volunteered for. He was posted in the Lal Chowk branch of the bank.

  Ayesha was a pretty, fair woman, modest and modern and educated. She had lost both her parents in a road accident much before her marriage to Tariq. Her younger sister lived in south Kashmir and was married to a local contractor who lately had lost work to the volatile situation in the village. Soon after his marriage to Ayesha, Tariq’s father had passed away of lung cancer. His two elder brothers had renounced him and their mother. The most interesting thing about Tariq and Ayesha was that their marriage had been an arranged one and despite the fact, they loved each other as if they had been in love since childhood. Ayesha was a homemaker.

  It took the Zargars only a few days to gel with me. Tariq would address me as Haji saeb, even when I hadn’t yet gone for Haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. Each time he came down for candles or curd or biscuits or bread or eggs or cigarettes, we chatted about the turmoil in his village and the situation in the city.

  My shop faced the verandah of the flat the Zargars had put up in. I observed their movements and came to understand that Tariq and Ayesha were an ideal couple. I had never known as lovely a husband-wife pair as them. With time I was convinced that in that entire neighbourhood, they were an epitome of love. And eventually, the couples among the neighbours and the tenants living on the ground and second floors of Khan Sojourn would in their occasional trifles and family squabbles often refer to Tariq and Ayesha to cite examples of love to each other.

  Ayesha regarded me as a father figure and respected me more than my own children did. Early each morning, she would come out on the verandah, lean over the rail topping the grille along its verge, and greet me with a salaam and ask me about my and my family’s well-being. Then she would squat on the verandah, polishing her husband’s black brogues, slant the shoes against the wall in a patch of sunlight to shine. And Tariq would sit in a basket chair—the upper half of his body hidden behind an Urdu newspaper—smoking his morning cigarettes, rustling the paper every now and then, turning the pages, his legs crossing each other. Minutes later, sounds of clanking ladles, sizzling skillets and hissing pressure cookers would come from the gauze door of their kitchen. The smell of fizzling omelettes would waft across the road and reach my shop. An hour later, she would again arrive on the verandah and give one more hard burnish to the sun-glazed shoes. Dressed mostly in a navy blue suit, carrying a briefcase, Tariq would emerge, ready to leave for office. She would help him with his shoes and he would always withdraw and insist that he do the laces himself and that she shouldn’t spoil him like that. But she wouldn’t listen to him and continued with the laces, and all the while he would try to pull his feet away and laugh, and she would laugh back, as if it were a game of tie-my-laces-if-you
-can, and she would hold one of his legs, pinch its calf and laugh again, send him screaming and hold the leg steady in the crook of her arm, and he would give up and laugh again.

  While dusting the shop, stacking the bricks of bread loaves into a block on the front counter and hanging the net baskets, full of packets of potato chips, on the hooks outside the shop for better display, I’d furtively notice these sweet exchanges between Tariq and Ayesha almost every day. And as soon as they became conscious of my presence, the couple would shyly pull themselves together and donned a serious demeanour. Ayesha would rearrange her dupatta and Tariq would clear his throat, and both would regard me respectfully with the loveliest of smiles. Long after he would disappear at the turn off on the link road and take the main road, she would look fixedly at him. Most often he would forget his wallet and she would loudly call out to me from the verandah and request me to stop him with my finger whistle. He would be about to disappear at the turn off, but he’d stop. She would run out barefooted with his wallet. I’d envy their love and narrate it every day to my wife, expecting to convert her. But nothing would change her and she would still be the same as she always was—grumpy. If I forgot my credits’ account ledger sometimes while leaving for the shop in the morning, my wife would curse my poor memory and endlessly nag me once I’d return home in the evening.